learning The main adaptive strategy
of the human species, ...although the root-patterns
of adaptation may
be inborn,
i.e., instinctual, and .
For instance, if humankind is attributed with the instinct to survive,
as many believe, we still have to learn how to survive by communication
of acquired skills, imitation of others, and trial-and-error.

Learn derives from OE laest, a track. To learn
is to follow a track. This derivation supports the theory that
the human species may have originally acquired the brain circuits
for self-directing narrative by
tracking animals. We were hunters for over 95%
of the life of the species, so this is not improbable. The trail
of the animal tells a story. Added to this would be the
story
of what happened as a troupe of hunters followed the track. In
sharing their experiences, hunters would have recounted a story
with beginning, middle and end: how the tracks were found, how
they were followed, and what resulted.

To Navajos, a persons
worth is determined by the stories or songs he knows. Luci
Tapahanso, Navajo author.

The human
predilection for narration may well stem from skills developed
by tracking animals, each
trail being the plot of a story. In metahistory we are attempting
to track ourselves, the human species, using words as signs
along the trail of our story.

The value of learning was elevated to a high
level in humanism, but unfortunately the emphasis fell on book
learning. Humanism carries the belief that unlimited power
to learn is inborn to the human species, but the humanist ideal
of learning is skewed away from all that can be learned by communion
with other, non-human species. This is a primary flaw
of humanism.

The revival of learning in Europe was inspired by
the recovery of Greek and Latin classics in their original form.
Direct access to these works had been prohibited by Christian
opposition to learning during the Middle Ages. The retrieval
of the Pagan intellectual spirit gave tremendous thrust to
humanism, but no particular direction.
The notion that the human species
evolves by learning — or,
to put it in another way, that human evolution operates through learning
that evolves, advances and expands — was never clearly
or coherently formulated in humanist philosophy. Consequently,
the ideal of human potential signaled by Renaissance humanists
like Pico della Mirandola [1463 - 94], author of the signal essay,
On the Dignity of Man, did not emerge in a well-founded or well-balanced
manner.

Human capacity to learn and adapt was rapidly
directed toward scientific achievement, and so the Renaissance
ideal of evolving humanity, vague and ill-defined
in the first place, was apidly co-opted to schemes of innovation
and technological advance. The notion of unlimited material progress
— i.e., scientific advance resulting in total mastery of
nature and the universal improvement of living conditions, and
culminating in a utopian society conceived and managed
by a technocratic elite — was introduced late in the Enlightenment,
around 1775, by which time the moral and visionary spirit of
humanism was
almost entirely defunct.

Romantic visionaries like Rousseau and Pestalozzi assumed the
natural goodness of humankind. This assertion conflicts with
the fundamentalist belief that humanity is flawed due to the
sin of the primal parents, Adam and Eve. The belief in innate
human goodness was often expressed in the frame of theistic assumptions.
Among the Romantics, the belief that God was the author of a
vast evolutionary plan implanted into the human mind, but then
left it for humans to discover the plan by their own efforts,
was developed by Herder in The Education of the Human Race.
At the dawn of the 20th century, this notion came to expression
in esoteric philosophies like Theosophy and Anthroposophy.

lego method of Gnostic scholarship My
technique of selecting from a wide range of textual materials
those passages that support a preconceived view or scenario.

In my comments on reconstructing the Fallen
Goddess Scenario, I explain how I intentionally select
material compatible with the Pagan (i.e., pre-Christian and
non-Christian) message the Gnostics. This method could be
applied in any area of scholarship and research, but it works
particularly well with the Gnostic materials because they
are so skanty and incoherent. No single text presents a full
picture of the Gnostic creation myth. Nor does any single
document from the Coptic codices present a consistent statement
of Gnostic views. Pro- and anti-Christian statements can
occur in the same text. To build a platform of anti-Christian
views, I select from numerous texts the passages compatible
with that outlook. I do so, however, in a completely transparent
manner, admitting what I'm doing.

Scholars also use the lego method on the extremely
difficult and obscure material of the Coptic Gnostic literature.
Unlike myself, however, they do not have, or do not admit to
having, a specific intention to reconstruct a particular outlook
or scenario.
Thus they do not put together particular lego pieces to make
an animal or a tree. Rather, they are content
to sort through the lego pieces and arrange them in piles.
Then they label the piles, using such complicated rubrics as
"a Jewish-Christian post-resurrection discourse in a Gnosticizing
milieu," and
write long treatises on what the labels mean.

lie: according to Voltaire, History
is the lie commonly agreed upon. According to Picasso, Art
is a lie that points to the truth. Might history them be
a lie that points to the truth? Or does it merely point to the
liar?